I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,-I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life,-and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

NATURE 1

Longfellow

As a fond mother, when the day is o'er
Leads by the hand her little child to bed,

Half willing, half reluctant to be led,

And leave his broken playthings on the floor;
Still gazing at them through the open door,
Nor wholly reassured and comforted

By promises of others in their stead,

Which, though more splendid, may not please him more;
So Nature deals with us, and takes away

Our playthings one by one, and by the hand

Leads us to rest so gently, that we go

Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay,

Being too full of sleep to understand

How far the unknown transcends the what we know.

WORK 2

Henry Van Dyke

Let me but do my work from day to day,

In field or forest, at the desk or loom,
In roaring market-place or tranquil room;

Let me but find it in my heart to say,

When flagrant wishes beckon me astray,

"This is my work; my blessing, not my doom;
Of all who live, I am the one by whom

This work can best be done in the right way."

Then shall I see it not too great, nor small,

To suit my spirit and to prove my powers;

Then shall I cheerful greet the labouring hours,

And cheerful turn, when the long shadows fall
At eventide, to play and love and rest,

Because I know for me my work is best.

1 Used by permission of the Houghton Mifflin Company.

2 From Music and Other Poems by Henry Van Dyke. Copyright, 1904, Charles Scribner's Sons. Used by special arrangement with the publishers.

VOICES 1

Louis Untermeyer

All day with anxious heart and wondering ear
I listened to the city; heard the ground
Echo with human thunder, and the sound
Go reeling down the streets and disappear.
The headlong hours, in their wild career,

Shouted and sang until the world was drowned
With babel-voices, each one more profound. . .

All day it surged-but nothing could I hear.

That night the country never seemed so still;
The trees and grasses spoke without a word

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To stars that brushed them with their silver wings.

Together with the moon I climbed the hill,

And, in the very heart of Silence, heard

The speech and music of immortal things.

SUGGESTIONS TO STUDENTS

The following sonnets, written by high school seniors, are placed here with the hope that they may inspire other students to try the sonnet form.

OUR STAR OF GOLD

A golden star upon the field of white,
Surrounded all with stars of deeper hue,

With crosses red, and living stars of blue.

A hero-boy upon the field of fight,

His life has gone protecting honor, right.

His soul was large; his heart beat strong and true;

He gave his all in just defence of you.

What means it all-these golden stars tonight?
That in the dawn of life, again, and love,

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Which sees no more the battle, death, and tears,
We all must on our way; our life enhance;
Must do our best, with help of God above,

To add to ours their hopes and aims and cares;
To give their best, the lads who sleep in France.

(V. C. '20.)

1 Used by special arrangement with the publishers, The Century Co.

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TO OUR SERVICE FLAG

You youthful flag with stars of deepest blue,

You seem to breathe of youthful heroes' deeds

In France there where the poppy blows its seeds.
You seem to tell us of devotion true.

Oh see that star of shining golden hue!

It speaks of death-death for all nations' needs.
It shows a soul of fearless youth which leads
And cries, "I leave my half-done task to you!"
Oh flag, tell them who in the years will come,
That they whose names are represented here
Went forth to war with willing hearts and hands,
E'en though they knew of those, the fated some,
Who, having not a single trace of fear,
Soon after were as dust in foreign lands!

(C. K. 20.)

SOME SONNETS FOR OPTIONAL READING

Note. Read at least eight sonnets. For each give the two waves of thought and the rhyming scheme. Is it .a perfect sonnet? If not, why? Which ones did you like best?

Sonnets XII, XVIII, XXXIII, CXVI......
......Shakespeare

"On His Having Arrived at the Age of Twenty

Three"

"On the Late Massacre in Piedmont".

To Cyriac Skinner".

"The World Is Too Much With Us".

. Milton

Milton
. Milton
..Wordsworth

"Scorn Not the Sonnet" (Notice in what three

ways this differs from the others)........ Wordsworth

"On the Extinction of the Venetian Repub

lic"

Wordsworth

.Byron

Shelley

Keats

.Keats

Keats

. Dante Rossetti

The Sonnet".

"Sonnets from the Portuguese," I, XIV, XX. .Mrs. Browning

'Patria"

'Love's Reason".

"The Child in the Garden".

"On the Life Mask of Abraham Lincoln". "What is a Sonnet?"....

"Sonnets Written in the Fall of 1914".

.Henry Van Dyke
. Henry Van Dyke
Henry Van Dyke

.R. W. Gilder

.R. W. Gilder

.George Edward Woodberry

CHAPTER III

THE ELEGY

Characteristics of the Elegy. The elegy is a lyric poem which expresses grief for a personal or public loss, or gives reflections on death in general. Although it is a poem of lamentation, there usually are suggestions of hope and faith which tend to allay and soothe the sorrow.

The Great English Elegies.-The greatest elegies in the English language are Milton's "Lycidas," in memory of his college friend, Edward King; Shelley's "Adonaïs," a tribute to Keats; Matthew Arnold's "Thyrsis," a lament on the death of his friend Clough; and In Memoriam," Tennyson's expression of grief for his dearest friend, Arthur Hallam. Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is also one of the great English elegies, although here there is no expression of personal grief, but solemn reflections called forth by the turf-covered graves in the lonely churchyard. The Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington" is both an elegy and an ode. Milton's "Lycidas," and "Uriel," by Percy MacKaye, may also be classed as odes.

LYCIDAS

John Milton

Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more,
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,

I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude

Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear,
Compel me to disturb your season due;
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.
Who would not sing for Lycidas? He knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not float upon his watery bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,

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Without the meed of some melodious tear.
Begin, then, Sisters of the sacred well

That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring;
Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string.
Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse!
So may some gentle Muse

With lucky words favour my destined urn,
And, as he passes, turn,

And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud!

For we were nursed upon the self-same hill,
Fed the same flock, by fountains, shade, and rill;
Together both, ere the high lawns appeared
Under the opening eyelids of the Morn,
We drove a-field, and both together heard
What time the grey-fly winds her sultry horn,
Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night,

Oft till the star that rose, at evening bright

Toward heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel.
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute;

Tempered to the oaten flute,

Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel
From the glad sound would not be absent long;
And old Damætas loved to hear our song.

But, oh! the heavy change, now thou art gone,
Now thou art gone, and never must return!
Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves,
With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown,
And all their echoes, mourn.

The willows, and the hazel copses green,

Shall now no more be scen

Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.

As killing as the canker to the rose,

Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,

Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear

When first the white-thorn blows;

Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep

Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear.

Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas?

For neither were ye playing on the steep,

Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie,

Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,

Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream.

Ay me! I fondly dream

"Had ye been there," for what could that have done? What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore,

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